Vanessa Aubuchon

Vanessa Aubuchon most recently served as Acting Deputy Director of the Airspace Operations and Safety Program, providing programmatic leadership for a cross-center aeronautics research portfolio. Prior to joining AOSP, Vanessa served as Acting Deputy Director of Langley’s Aeronautics Research Directorate, where she helped lead the Directorate’s broad aeronautics research portfolio and supported strategy, workforce planning, organizational operations, and portfolio execution.

She also previously served as Deputy Project Manager for the Transformational Tools and Technologies Project, leading a broad, multi-center portfolio of foundational and emerging aeronautics research. 

Earlier in her career, Vanessa held technical and leadership roles in Langley’s Flight Dynamics Branch and Dynamic Systems and Control Branch. Her technical work has included flight dynamics, aerodynamics, and dynamic stability wind tunnel testing, simulation, systems engineering, and flight testing for Orion, Commercial Crew vehicles, and subscale research aircraft.

She also served as Technical Integration Manager for the Integrated Aviation Systems Program at NASA Headquarters and as Associate Lead for Test and Verification for the Orion Ascent Abort-2 flight test.

Vanessa holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Mississippi State University and an M.S. in Aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Engineering Management at Old Dominion University.